The key passage is this :'So I had to say what I think, which is that it would be better for the country if David Cameron were to continue as Prime Minister next year.'

He goes on to qualify this (and to make some typically unconventional remarks about the much-derided Ed Balls, whom it is now fashionable to dismiss).

But he knows what he is doing when he says this, and he knows which bit is going to be quoted. Mr Rentoul, biographer of the Blair creature and longstanding Blair enthusiast, is now an open Cameroon.

Many such people, in politics and the media, have been secret supporters of the Cameron project since Gordon Brown became Premier. But this explicit declaration is something new.

I have argued for many years that the Tory party has been captured by Blairism, because its only purpose now is to obtain office, and-having no moral, philosophical, economic or other critique of New Labour - it seeks to do so by copying the machine which repeatedly thrashed the Tories at elections from 1997 onwards.

Very interesting times are coming. once the results of the Euro-elections are known in May. Expect a lot of realigning. But the pretence that the Conservative Party is a conservative, patriotic formation surely cannot be maintained much longer.

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@Neil Saunders | 23 January 2014 at 05:36 PM

I can't agree with you. Most of the indigenous working class - now styled the aspirational working class - has migrated into the lower middle class. This was Margaret Thatcher's 'revolution', and it forced the Labour Party into becoming 'New Labour', which quietly archived Cause 4 and sought to straddle the centre ground in British politics, unhinging the Conservative Party in the process. The Conservative Party's natural constituency suddenly found itself much expanded, the borders reorganised, and hi-jacked by New Labour. It seems to me they (New Labour) were phenomenally successful, the Conservative Party clearly still all at sea with its self-identity.

But I agree that the benefits-chav end of things remains a problem. It won't be the source of mass industrial action anymore or ever again provide the recruits for widespread thug-picketing, but it remains a problem. Yet it's not as if the capitalist system anymore needs a strata of semi-zombies to staff the ultra-exploitation ranks of business enterprise, for they hardly exist anymore. All those enterprises have moved to points east decades ago. So the chav class is a caste with no role and no purpose. I can only think that forcing education into this caste whether they like it or not, and likely they will resist, is the only long-term solution.

I don't think the immigrants will simply provide another parallel chav class. They were motivated to come to Britain to improve their foreign circumstances. They are therefore aspirationally disposed from the outset and will be keen to move on from there, although it won't apply to all. There will be super-exploitation of course where the more crafty of the capitalists can get away with it, but I think the numbers will be small.

So in summary, this is a capitalist system, and while we have to get over unfairness's at the top in the interests of greater prosperity, we also have to get over what looks to be a small chav caste permanently at the bottom. We can't razor-wire off the estates and erect watchtowers, so we'll just have to get used to their routine presence in the GBH courts and feed them to the prisons as best we can.

The working class migrated in two distinct directions, one geographical, the other social: they either fled places (to speak in London-based terms) such as the East End, and even inner suburbs such as East Ham, Ilford or Barking out to Basildon, Harlow and beyond; or they fled the respectable industrial proletariat, not to become middle-class, but to form part of the permanent, "Benefits Street"-style underclass. Their places in the great cities have been taken by (mainly third-world) immigrants, while the social status they vacated has no place in the post-Thatcher scheme of things and has thus remained altogether abandoned (and its residual needs serviced by imported Eastern Europeans at a lower cost to employers).

The hollow disingenuousness of modern political ‘discourse' is both depressing and terrifying. I used to be critical of those who didn’t vote (and although I will always continue to vote; even if merely by some misunderstood (Dimbleby driven) conditioned reflex) I have come to see that the stance of the non-voter is just as principled (perhaps more so it could be argued) as that of the ‘tribal voters’ who help perpetuate our vacuous political system.

Britain undoubtedly is a single-party state, with a vaguely left wing and a vaguely right wing, but in truth little to separate the two wings. The LibDems will disappear from British politics in 2015 while UKIP will remain essentially a TV interview party. Whatever the outcome of the next general election the government will in reality be a Conservative/Labour coalition.

The migration of the working-class to the middle-class during the closing decades of the 20th century is responsible for the redundancy of the two-party state. To the extent that left-wingism has found a new role it is as the champion of equality, diversity and political correctness. The social engineering we see all over the BBC is only the more visually accessible working of this agenda.

But the right-wing is on board with this too, capturing many of the themes which otherwise might be imagined to be left-wing: the environment, climate change, renewables. These right-wing captures will of course have a business impetus behind them. Since business sees more profit in the EU than not, business also will tend to support the EU. Democracy, sovereignty, freedom, et al, is incidental to the business case - in fact irrelevant.

It hardly matters which labels one chooses to attach to the sales teams in Britain's sales-pitch democracy, in any case now largely ornamental. Call it Blairite if you wish, or not if you wish. It doesn't matter. The difference between Blairite and non-Blairite is a matter of which side of the store window catches the more favourable light in whatever season the election takes place. The goods are easily moved should the clouds happen unexpectedly to come from the west rather than the south, or the rain heavier than was forecast.

I regularly watch Andrew Neil's Daily Politics and Sunday Politics, and of course This Week. I cannot remember the point at which I realised you could unplug a Conservative MP in mid-sentence and plug in a Labour MP, and the Labour MP would continue the sentence seamlessly. And vice versa of course. It was quite a long time ago.

I read your book 'The Cameron Delusion' over the Christmas break Mr. Hitchens (anyone who hasn't read it, I'd label it as unmissable...) and in terms of your narrative of how influential Politicians eventually grow with influential Journalists in a symbiotic relationship, I'd say there were echoes within this matter.

You might wonder if Mr. Rentoul has been having lunches with a well-known Blairite within the Miliband family? A figure who might be deemed to have an axe to grind with Edward Miliband?

The claim that this is a new development seems a little overstated. John Rentoul says in his piece that before the 2010 election, he expressed a preference for David Cameron over Gordon Brown, and he provides a link to the article where he said it. I can see very little change in his public position: he thinks Cameron the least worst alternative prime minister on offer.

I think that Mr. Cameron is very close to being a Liberal Democrat. It is a thing that we see all over Europe. Leaders of parties that used to be on the right are often far more progressive than their voters. In the Netherlands, we see the same thing, Mark Rutte from the VVD (by the way, a close friend of Cameron) is clearly a part of the left wing of his party and even stated in his youth that the VVD and D66 (the Dutch equivalent of the LibDems) are basically the same party. There is much truth in that, the former political right is becomming overwhelmingly progressive and only continue to move more to the left, even though their voters have very different ideas.

Thank you for that link to John Retoul's article. However, what was far more interesting was John Rentoul's link in that article to Owen Jones open letter to UKIP supporters on the 15th January. It seems that you are not the only one with an interest in 'reaching out' to UKIP.

Cameron launched the Breaking up Britain referendum on the Andrew Marr Show on 8 Jan 2012.

There is no Scottish referendum - it is a referendum - (no mandate, no vote in HOC, no Act of Parliament). to end the British nation state by avoiding parliamentary election and the participation of our fellow countrymen in England, Northern Ireland and Wales.

The decision in 2010 general election of the 59 constituencies in Scotland to be part of the British Parliament is to be overridden by the referendum - source Scotland Office -
BEFORE the next general election.

Only the small commonrepresentation.org.uk Unionist campaign based in Glasgow stands against Camerons plan to further disintegrate the Union.

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